National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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India and Tibet : vol.1 |
220 THE STORMING OF GYANTSE JONG
was crowned, and at last our men were seen placing the
Union Jack on the highest pinnacle of the jong. The
Tibetans had fled precipitately, and Gyantse was ours.
The Tongsa Penlop next morning came over to con-
gratulate General Macdonald and myself ; and we went
over the jong together. Till I had got up there and
looked down through the Tibetan loopholes on our insig-
nificant Mission post below, I had not realized how certain
the Tibetans must have felt that they could overwhelm
us, and how impossible it must have seemed that we could
ever turn the tables upon them. If one stood in the Round
Tower of Windsor Castle and looked down from there
upon a house and garden in the fields about Eton, held by
some strangers who said they had come to make a treaty,
one would get the best idea of what must have been in
the Tibetans' minds. They were in a lofty and seemingly
impregnable fortress in the heart of their own country.
VVe were a little dot in the plain below. The idea of 1
making a treaty with us, if they did not want to, must
have appeared ridiculous. And as I stood there in their
position and looked down upon what had till just then
been my own, I soon understood how it was that the
'l'a Lama and other delegates had been so casual in their
behaviour.
Yet, in spite of our success, and to a certain extent by
reason of it, I was still ready to negotiate with Tibetan
delegates. I had disliked, with an intensity which only it
those can know who have been in a similar position, the
idea of making any mention of negotiation during all that
critical time in May, while they were firing proudly at us
from the jong, and were surrounding me in my little post
below. Now that, through General Macdonald's skilful
dispositions and the bravery of his troops, I was in the top
place, I readily tried to negotiate. And 1 thought that
His Majesty's Government were anxious that further
efforts to negotiate here should be made ; for on June 25
they had telegraphed that if there was reasonable expecta-
tion of the early arrival of the Resident, accompanied by
competent Tibetan negotiators, the advance to Lhasa might
be postponed. They thought that the advance should
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